Funding letter, comms and connected devices

Yesterday morning we had our  UEB (University Executive Board) and Heads of Department Forum. Had a regular catch up from the VC (or acting in this case) and it was noted that since the Autumn statement where various things relating to HE were announced, including the lifting of the cap on student recruitment, we had heard - nothing. No letter from BIS to HEFCE signed "love Dave and Vince". But lo and behold, it arrived yesterday afternoon. I spotted it on twitter, were it was live tweeted, 140 characters at a time, by the The Times Higher, who looked as thought they had ripped it up and given it to 3 different journalists who did a stirling job in getting the news out. Nothing really unexpected - the reduction in funding  was expected as we finally transition to the new fees regime, although there was a slightly bizarre increase in capital funding. If you're more interested in its length rather than it content, then the best analysis of it together with15 years of grant letter funding, is in this great blog post by @registrarism, or Paul Greatrix from Nottingham University.

Today I was at the Professional Service Executive, where as well as the HEFCE letter and our planning priorities,  we had a presentation on our new internal communications strategy - One University. Lots of exciting stuff in it. Reclaiming email as a useful tool rather than for sending information no-one is interested is only a small part of it but one which I'm sure will be welcomed!

Rest of the day has been spent writing a presentation for later in the week, and in doing so I came
across this site:

It's the Wolfram connected devices project  whose goal is to provide a definitive, curated, source of systematic knowledge about connected devices. Quite an undertaking!